New York Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / October 15, 2017

Review: A Beautiful Poison

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Just beyond the Gilded Age, in the mist-covered streets of New York, the deadly Spanish influenza ripples through the city. But with so many victims in her close circle, young socialite Allene questions if the flu is really to blame. All appear to have been poisoned—and every death was accompanied by a mysterious note.

Desperate for answers and dreading her own engagement to a wealthy gentleman, Allene returns to her passion for scientific discovery and recruits her long-lost friends, Jasper and Birdie, for help. The investigation brings her closer to Jasper, an apprentice medical examiner at Bellevue Hospital who still holds her heart, and offers the delicate Birdie a last-ditch chance to find a safe haven before her fragile health fails.

As more of their friends and family die, alliances shift, lives become entangled, and the three begin to suspect everyone—even each other. As they race to find the culprit, Allene, Birdie, and Jasper must once again trust each other, before one of them becomes the next victim.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

Loved the backdrop in this book. World War I (with the reader knowing it’s nearing its end… but not the characters). The dreadful influenza reaching American shores and starting a war all of its own. Socialites in their own little world, feeling the bigger world as an intrusion that may or may touch them (whether draft or flu). Murders in those ‘higher spheres’, with the reminder that with a little money, nobody will try and look further. The early times of another type of poisoning, too, for the girls who painted clock dials with magic glowing in the dark (if you haven’t done so yet, read The Radium Girls, it’s really interesting).

I liked the beginning well enough: an engagement party, one of the guests falling to her death on the stair, and it turns out the fall isn’t what killed her—poison did. This murder, more than the party itself, reunites the three main characters, who got separated four years prior to these events, due to various reasons, but mostly selfish ones, such as falling out of favour (God forbids your daughter keeps associating with the child of people who committed suicide, right, this is so vulgar and out of taste); and considering the latter, there’s no wonder this relationship is tainted, poisoned, from the start, simmering with both happiness at having friends back yet also with resentment and bitter memories. Which in turn made Allene, Birdie and Jasper unreliable narrators to the power of ten, because in a mystery with murders aplenty, they were part of the pool of potential culprits just as much as other people at the engagement party.

There was a lot of unhealthy tension in this book, because of the characters’ past, and because of other secrets that got revealed later. Although in a way, I liked it, I wasn’t too keen on how it all unfurled; the characters weren’t very likeable, but for me that wasn’t even due to their personalities (I can enjoy a ‘non-likeable’ character), more to the fact they were somewhat inconsistent with what was told of them at first. For instance, Allene is presented as loving chemistry, but this didn’t play as much of a part as I expected (mostly she still remained the socialite totally oblivious to the people around her, unless what affected those people affected her as well). Perhaps Birdie was, all in all, the most consistent of all. I’m not sure where the line was, that line that would’ve made me like these characters more; it just didn’t click with me here.

The narrative, I think, was also poised between too little and too much. Part of me wanted more of the setting (New York, descriptions, parties, how the flu claimed people—horrifying symptoms, and so many deaths), yet at the same time, the setting plus the murders didn’t mesh fully, and the plot felt too convoluted when nearing the end. And, of course, what’s happening to Birdie—as the author mentioned at the end (and I agree), historical accuracy demanded there could be no closure on that specific point, but this means that, well, either you already know about that bit of history, or you don’t, and it makes no sense. Tricky.

Conclusion: It was an OK read for me: mildly entertaining in general, but not a gripping mystery. Here I preferred the setting to the characters.

Yzabel / November 2, 2015

Review: These Shallow Graves

These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Jo Montfort is beautiful and rich, and soon—like all the girls in her class—she’ll graduate from finishing school and be married off to a wealthy bachelor. Which is the last thing she wants. Jo dreams of becoming a writer—a newspaper reporter like the trailblazing Nellie Bly.

Wild aspirations aside, Jo’s life seems perfect until tragedy strikes: her father is found dead. Charles Montfort shot himself while cleaning his pistol. One of New York City’s wealthiest men, he owned a newspaper and was a partner in a massive shipping firm, and Jo knows he was far too smart to clean a loaded gun.

The more Jo hears about her father’s death, the more something feels wrong. Suicide is the only logical explanation, and of course people have started talking, but Jo’s father would never have resorted to that. And then she meets Eddie—a young, smart, infuriatingly handsome reporter at her father’s newspaper—and it becomes all too clear how much she stands to lose if she keeps searching for the truth. But now it might be too late to stop.

The past never stays buried forever. Life is dirtier than Jo Montfort could ever have imagined, and this time the truth is the dirtiest part of all.

Review:

[I received a copy of this novel through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A bit too long to my taste for the story it told, although some of the scenes at the end were worth the read.

It started with interesting ideas. Jo is a wealthy girl, who may look like she’s got everything but is tied to her family’s wishes and to society’s diktats: finishing school is just that, and once she’s out of it, she’ll marry the man who was already chosen for her, and will have to give up her dreams of writing. Journalism is so below her class that she’s not even allowed to read the newspapers, and has to do so in secrecy. She doesn’t want to give up, doesn’t want to renounce, yet deep inside, she feels there’s no other choice, that choosing otherwise will ruin her family as well as herself; she’s likely to get disallowed, and it takes some bravery to risk that fate. Jo is brave… but not so brave. And although it’s not openly stated (way less openly than the “fine women = fine breeding dogs” comparison enforced by insufferable Grandmama), I think this is perhaps why she embraces the mystery surrounding her father’s death. Not only because she’s bereaved, not only because she wants to learn the truth: because this is her first and only chance at an adventure before she gets stuffed into a life she’s may or may not really want. Selfish? Maybe. But understandable.

As often in similar stories, there was romance involved, and unfortunately, in this case, it kind of killed the mood for me. The danger and stakes Jo had to face were already a lot, enough to highlight the dilemma in her existence. The love interest thrown in the middle (without any spark in there) added drama and angst-filled scenes that clashed with what could have been otherwise a fine thread woven into the mystery: Jo’s wishes to live a life of her own choosing, as a woman who wants to be a journalist (all the more since she could’ve been of the muckraker variety, albeit a few years before investigative journalism really started to soar).

Trudy smiled ruefully. “What can I say? I merely wish to smoke. Sparky can forgive that. You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that.”

Instead, this took the backstage in favour of trading one man for the other, as if the real choice here was only who to love, and not the whole package. To be fair, though, the author didn’t go with the easiest solution at the end, which in my opinion is good. Still, had there been no romantic plot, it may have allowed for more development when it came to Jo’s family, her friends, and her life as a person in general; it may also have helped fleshing out the friendships she developed, as those seemed to happen too fast, too strongly, and were not really believable, not considering what the characters did for each other later.

The tone of the story was a bit… childish, considering the themes tackled (suicide, life on the streets, prostitutes and pickpockets, digging up corpses—not a spoiler, by the way, as the first chapter opens exactly on that). Often a chapter would end on a mini-cliffhanger phrased in a way that I would’ve expected from a novel with a much younger audience, so to speak (for instance, “Jo and Eddie were trapped,” or “Jo and Eddie were locked in the closet.”). This clashed with what was a more serious story. The writing style in general border on the “telling, not showing” variety, and made for a dull reading in places. I couldn’t care that much about Jo, or Eddie, whose feelings seemed more mechanical when told in such a way.

Moreover, Jo didn’t strike me as believable: she was way too ignorant and naive for someone who supposedly had an interest in investigative journalism, read the newspapers behind her parents’ backs, and was supposed to be inquisitive and sharp. A lot of times, other characters had to spell out things for her (for instance, she took her sweet time to understand the hints at what “Della’s house” meant, when it was absolutely obvious). It would’ve worked if she had been a fully-sheltered young woman of fine upbringing who had never taken an interest to anything else than her family, gardening and parties, but it didn’t fit the wannabe-journalist part of her character.

Finally, a lot of things were predictable, both in the mystery and its clues, and in how some characters were linked to the investigation plot. I suspect the latter was intended in a Dickensian way, but I found this heavy-handed (there are a few glaring references to Oliver Twist) and not very efficient. It was too easy to guess who was related to whom, and where the whole thing was going, even though, as I wrote above, some of the ending scenes were fine, and made up a little for many more boring scenes that came before.

Conclusion: an interesting historical background and OK mystery, that however would’ve unfurled more efficiently without all the romantic angst and faffing about. 1.5 to 2 stars.

Yzabel / July 26, 2015

Review: Pawn Shop

Pawn Shop by Joey Esposito

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Pawn Shop is an original graphic novel about the intertwining lives of four strangers in the ecosystem of New York City, connected by the streets they walk on and the people they touch. Following a lonely widower, a struggling Long Island Railroad employee, a timid hospice nurse, and a drug-addled punk, Pawn Shop explores the big things that separate us and the little moments that inexplicably unite us.

Written by Joey Esposito (Footprints) and drawn by Sean Von Gorman (Toe Tag Riot), Pawn Shop is a slice-of-life tale that weaves together separate lives to celebrate the ever-changing nature of New York City and the people that make it the greatest city in the world.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Four people in New York, whose lives intersect, briefly connect, are more or less related to each other, through a common denominator: a simple pawn shop, in which old memories come to life, long-lost items surface again, from one hand to the other, for various reasons. Some honest, some not. Some out of need, some just by chance.

Harold, Arthur, Jen and Samantha all live different lives, coming from different backgrounds, but all marred with regrets. Regrets about not proposing sooner to a wife who died too soon after the wedding. About not daring confessing to the person who matters most. About letting someone else control your life because of just one bit of leverage. About trying to do what’s best for your family, to the point of neglecting your own life—yet you cannot let go, and if you do, guilt is only waiting at the corner.

I didn’t enjoy the art, I admit, but the stories were interesting, as well as the way they connected: through just enough little coincidences, but not enough to look as if they were too many or too unbelievable. For instance, it wasn’t illogical for Samantha to meet or at least see those people who always travelled the same subway line at the same time every day. For Arthur to see her, since he worked as a nurse to help her ailing brother. Or even for Jen to bump into Harold upon exiting the pawn shop.

I may have liked to see a little more about their lives, especially Jen’s, as her boyfriend implied that one word from him could destroy her life (in the end, we won’t know if he did or not). Or maybe there’ll be a second volume to tell us more about these characters? I don’t know. It both feels pretty complete as is it, with this “want” more a whim on my part than out of any fault of the book.

Fairly interesting, in any case, and very touching when it came to human feelings and how even little things can cause a lot of changes to happen. Changes that are life-altering, though not necessarily in a grand way: subtlety can have just as much weight, after all.

3.5 stars.